Fodder

 Fodder

 

Looking back, secondary school was cruel;

Many a sensitive soul was battered;

Fight to survive, seemed to be the main rule,

Or at least the only one that mattered,

Once primary innocence was shattered,

Upon being punched and kicked in the head

In the playground, by the bicycle shed.

 

School finished for him on reaching sixteen,

When he, (after learning not much apart

From how to pretend to be brutal, mean,

Not at all cowardly, should a fight start,

And how to suppress the cries of a heart),

Left with an average lower than D,

And started a job in a factory.

 

On the morning train to Liverpool Street,

He stood in the midst of a smoky haze,

With other commuters, bereft of a seat,

Crammed like the cigarette butts in ashtrays,

(You could still smoke on the train in those days),

With a morning rag (The Sun, or some shit)

Unread and tucked underneath his armpit.

 

He rode each day in those carriages brown,

And things stayed the same for nigh on two years,

Till work relocated to another town,

And he, after saying goodbye over beers,

Moved to new pastures, along with his peers:

Colleagues and friends on the factory floor,

Who followed the firm to avoid being poor.

 

They left for a new town, reluctantly,

To follow the carrot that dangled there,

In front of their faces, persuasively;

Offering hope and a future quite fair:

A salaried pension beyond compare,

For which, after years of service they’d be

Thankful to those at the top of the tree.

 

And so after years of service there came

A salaried pension? No not at all;

Job cuts were announced, and our hero’s name

Was under the axe that was bound to fall;

The final package was terribly small,

And the management’s sadly sailed away;

Gone to wherever the billionaires stay.

 

Looking back, secondary school, was grim

A test of his endurance, nothing more;

Was that then the plan for many like him?

The law of the jungle’s hard to ignore;

It’s too easy to be fodder for sure;

Destined for the scrap heap, labelled unskilled,

Unwritten prophesies being fulfilled.